Staff & customer reviews of recently enjoyed titles at the Jackson County Public Library in Seymour, Indiana.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus is based on an actual request by Sweet Medicine Man Lone Wolf to President Ulysses S. Grant that one thousand white women be given to the Cherokee nation as brides so that their children could walk in both worlds. Although the request was never fulfilled, Jim Fergus has made an intriguing story about the first - and only - forty women who went to be Cherokee brides. May Dodd emerges as a lynch pin in this little group. She keeps several journals during her year in the West describing the journey from Chicago and the reason she signed up, their stay at the last fort before meeting the Cherokees, their month of acclimation before the group wedding ceremony, and the events that followed right up until the Black Hills became interesting to gold-seekers, and the Indian nations took their stand to remain free people.

It was interesting to see the events leading up to the Battle of the Little Big Horn through white eyes living with the Cherokee. Had May kept writing, she might have found that she didn't fit well in either world anymore.